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ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4
nudone:
i've been away a couple of days without net access, on returning i see that i'm currently going through the process of having a PayPal transaction disputed for me - for an item i certainly didn't attempt to buy, an iPhone 4 at 975 dollars. i mean, yeah, like i've secretly always wanted one.
hopefully it will be resolved quickly. i've no idea how they've done it, the "seller" claimes to be from Algeria and i've meant to have been the winning bidder via eBay. strange that my eBay account displays no history about this "seller" or the iPhone they have fraudulently sold me.
what disturbs me (currently) is that this is meant to be an eBay related transaction and yet it isn't in my eBay records. how on earth is this thief doing it (don't answer; don't give anyone any tips if you already know).
PayPal is obvioulsy thinking along the same lines otherwise they wouldn't have flagged the transaction for investigation. now i just have to wait for the "seller" to reply to PayPal with their version of the story. i'm hoping this doesn't drag out into some kind of Kafkaesque dispute where i have to prove i didn't bid on an item that never passed through my eBay account.
nudone:
oh, just got an email back from PayPal. not bad service, that was quick - i only disputed the transaction about an hour ago.
hopefull that's the end of it.
(the thought of the iPhone 4 will now leave me even more traumatised than it did already.)
mouser:
The real question is.. how did someone managed to make a charge go through on your paypal account.
That is the mystery you have to solve.
And just to clarify, i'm sure you've already considered this -- but for anyone else reading, be aware that sometimes a scammer will send you an email pretending to be from paypal, pretending that you have been charged for something, and giving you fake links to paypal customer services, etc. You need to make sure on all such occasions that if you think you have been wrongfully charged for something, that you NOT use any of the links in the email to go to the site, but open the website manually on your own.
nudone:
agreed, it's an old routine for us (around here) but any new "netizens" should always log into their online accounts (or anything they have to log into) via the official web address - never a link.
but, yes, it is a worry. how did they access my PayPal account. i only do so, myself, on this machine - which isn't infected to my knowlege (running scans again now). this sale had definitely gone through my PayPal account - it doesn't look like my credit card has been charged. whether that is because PayPal suspected something or whether it just hasn't been charged yet - i don't know.
when i said the seller was from Algeria, it may have been that the item was meant to be posted to Algeria. it's a bit confusing looking at the statement. perhaps this is what automatically flagged it by PayPal. probably the fact that i'd not bid for the item using my eBay account also made it suspicious.
the big problem is: how to prevent this kind of thing happening again. i'm careful online...
...is that still not good enough?
mouser:
well you need to change your paypal login password immediately, that would be a start.
paypal has an incredibly cool hardware security key that generates one-time-use login codes; it's like a $5 onetime fee and i love mine.
more info:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing_CommandDriven/securitycenter/PayPalSecurityKey-outside
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